Pedestrians have been walking past the Kingfish for decades. Emil Peinert owner of the Kingfish pub and Cafe has filed to make his very beloved watering hole a Oakland landmark Thursday October 6, 2011.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Pedestrians have been walking past the Kingfish for decades. Emil...

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Bryan Maas from Oakland enjoys a game of shuffleboard at the Kingfish. Emil Peinert owner of the Kingfish pub and Cafe has filed to make his very beloved watering hole a Oakland landmark Thursday October 6, 2011.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Bryan Maas from Oakland enjoys a game of shuffleboard at the...

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Old sports tickets including Cal football adorn the walls of the Kingfish along with hundreds of sports photography. Emil Peinert owner of the Kingfish pub and Cafe has filed to make his very beloved watering hole a Oakland landmark Thursday October 6, 2011.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Old sports tickets including Cal football adorn the walls of the...

Image 4 of 6

Emil Peinert owner of the Kingfish pub and Cafe has filed to make his very beloved watering hole a Oakland landmark Thursday October 6, 201.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

Emil Peinert owner of the Kingfish pub and Cafe has filed to make...

Image 5 of 6

University of California football fans watch the Bears play Oregon on TV at the Kingfish. Emil Peinert owner of the Kingfish pub and Cafe has filed to make his very beloved watering hole a Oakland landmark Thursday October 6, 2011.

Photo: Lance Iversen, The Chronicle

University of California football fans watch the Bears play Oregon...

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University of California football fans pack into the Kingfish to watch the Bears play Oregon on TV. Emil Peinert owner of the Kingfish pub and Cafe has filed to make his very beloved watering hole a Oakland landmark Thursday October 6, 2011.

The roof sags, the beams lean, the floors slope more than some East Bay hills.

"The whole place is twisted. There's nothing square in it," said owner Emil Peinert. "One of the windows just popped out."

Apparently, the only thing holding the Oakland bait-shop-turned-saloon upright is old Oakland A's and Cal football tickets stapled to the wall.

That, and pure, 100-proof, dive-bar love.

"I've been coming here 35 years and the only bad day I've had was when Kirk Gibson hit that home run off Dennis Eckersley (in 1988). But that wasn't the bar's fault," said Mike Flynn, a Kingfish regular who owns an Oakland weather stripping business. "I have never met anyone who didn't have a good time here."

That love will be tested in the next few months, as the Kingfish owners embark on a precedent-setting move to list the funky old bar as an Oakland landmark. If they succeed, the Kingfish will be one of the few buildings in the Bay Area to achieve landmark status purely for cultural reasons, and one of the only bars.

By becoming a landmark, the owners hope to get tax breaks to make repairs and potentially save the beloved pub from demolition. The landlord, who did not return phone calls Tuesday, applied for permits several years ago to build condominiums at the site.

At least one Oakland planning commissioner seemed open to the idea of listing the Kingfish alongside such local monuments as the Tribune Tower, Paramount Theater, Lake Merritt and Earl Warren's old house.

"When I first went by the Kingfish, to be honest, I didn't get it," said Planning Commissioner Michael Colbruno. "But then I started hearing what people said about it. The generations of people who've really loved the place. I think it's an important discussion to have."

In good company

Still, the Kingfish might be a tough sell to the Oakland landmarks board, which has much tougher standards than, say, Berkeley's landmarks commission.

Oakland has recognized one other bar - Heinold's First and Last Chance Saloon - but only because Jack London once frequented the place.

The Kingfish opened in 1922 at Claremont and Telegraph avenues in the Temescal neighborhood as a bait shop for fishermen traveling the old road linking the bay to the delta. It was among the circle of bars located just outside a dry zone surrounding the UC Berkeley campus.

"Before Prohibition, it was basically a bait shop with bar stools," Peinert said. "Although during Prohibition I think it was pretty much the same thing."

The last renovation occurred in the 1940s, according to city records. The only changes since then have been contributed by patrons: an oar from the Cal crew team, someone's collection of license plates, faded photos of long-gone Cal quarterbacks, a ticket stub from a 1967 Warriors-Celtics game.

The fridge dates from the 1930s. The heater is a pre-World War II German relic. The well-used shuffleboard table is almost 70 years old.

Prices haven't changed much either. A 24-ounce can of Pabst Blue Ribbon is only $3, and $6 will get you a shot of Old Crow and a Red Stripe beer.

Until recently there was a pay phone inside, site of many a momentous phone call, Flynn said.

"After a couple beers, guys would get up the nerve to call someone. A lot of first dates happened that way. And last dates," he said.

Where life happens

But it's not architectural or historic significance that are the Kingfish's best arguments for landmark status. It's the stuff that's a little harder to quantify, said Jeff Norman, author of a book on Temescal history.

"The place just reeks of social history, echoes of all the people who've come through and left a part of their lives there," he said. "The walls are an archive, but at the same time it's very much part of the present."

Just about the only patron who didn't have fun at the Kingfish was Barry Goldwater, the 1964 Republican presidential nominee, said former owner Bill Vaughn. Goldwater had lunch there in the 1990s and when a waitress gave him a Kingfish T-shirt, he wiped his mouth on it.

But for everyone else, the Kingfish has been a place to relax, see old friends, watch a game on TV and escape, for a spell, the rapidly gentrifying world outside.

"It just has a great vibe," said co-owner Mike Bowler, athletic director at Bishop O'Dowd High School. "Everyone I've ever brought here just loves the place. We just need to preserve it before it falls down."